Second phase of Africa Online Safety Fund launched by Impact Amplifier, Google.org

A second tranche of financing from Google.org has been obtained by the South African social impact consultancy company Impact Amplifier in order to begin the second phase of the Africa Online Safety Fund, which looks for creative answers to online safety problems.

In Africa, there are more than 500 million internet users. While this enormous growth in internet, smartphone, and mobile network usage has opened up many new avenues for socioeconomic development on the continent, it has also given rise to a number of safety issues.

These include financial scams, misinformation, and disinformation, as well as identity theft, bullying and harassment, sex trafficking, hate crimes, and terrorist recruiting and propaganda. In order to assist creative, already-existing, and novel solutions to these issues, the Africa Online Safety Fund was formed.

The fund’s initial phase concentrated on supporting 26 social entrepreneurs in nine African nations who have original ideas for tackling internet safety. Even though the effort was fruitful, it was obvious that a wider scope was needed to handle the breadth and complexity of this problem.

Impact Amplifier intends to tackle the issue at the ecosystem level in phase two by employing a variety of strategies, such as creating a central digital repository of African online safety research, starting new research to fill some of the critical knowledge gaps, assembling and developing new and existing educational materials for children, teachers, and parents about online safety, and funding African businesses and organizations that are developing distinctive products.

The application period is starting from March 1.